


No Matter How Sweet, No Matter How Brave

by anthologia



Series: Kitten AU [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, F/M, Injury, Insecurity, It was going to happen sometime, Kidnapping, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Rescue, Self-Esteem Issues, Third Act Misunderstanding, kitty!, self-sabotage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4037755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthologia/pseuds/anthologia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And isn’t that just… great. His stray wandered off and came limping back to him in need of care and cuddles. How sweet. Maybe this time she’ll stay close where it’s safe. Let him pamper her until some new project comes along to capture his attention.</p><p>No. She’s not interested in that story tonight. </p><p>(Part of the Kitten AU, in which 63!Tim becomes Catwoman's protege instead of Batman's, and she and Nightwing have a Thing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally had a Kitten AU long enough to justify starting its own fic. Title from Regina Spektor's "The Sword and the Pen".
> 
> (Before there's confusion: Dick and Babs are not dating in this fic. They're just close because, well, Dick and Babs.)

Dick Grayson is Nightwing. Of course Tim knows who he is, she’s known practically since he started running around as Robin. She hasn’t let him in on that secret, however, because she treasures the occasional run-in sweet Timothea Drake has with Officer Grayson almost as much as Kitten’s time with Nightwing. It’s a chance to see a slightly different side of him – a different side of _her_. Timothea is as much of a mask as Kitten is sometimes, but it’s a different mask, a different her.

She happens to catch sight of him out and about as Dick Grayson while she’s running errands as Timothea, and she almost goes up to him to say hello, but he’s with someone. A redhead in a wheelchair – Barbara Gordon, the commissioner’s daughter, former Batgirl. It looks like they’re out enjoying the nice weather that spring brought to Gotham for once, which is. Good for them.

Tim’s breath hitches in a bad way when Dick gives Barbara a kiss on the cheek before theatrically presenting the ice cream cone he just bought her. Because. She thinks he’s given _her_ that look before, or at least Kitten, but Kitten is a game and Dick Grayson has a life. He has a _life_ and Barbara Gordon, and there’s absolutely no reason she should expect him to want to _keep_ her if she’s no longer the stray he’s trying to tame with bowls of milk and the occasional affectionate physical contact.

Of course he has to notice her standing there _then_ and gives her a cheerful wave, because she’s a girl he vaguely knows who he’s always very kind and friendly to and who means absolutely nothing to him, so she plasters on Timothea’s smile and waves back before getting out of there as fast as she can without actually looking like she’s running away.

 -

For months, she successfully avoids Nightwing _and_ Dick Grayson by taking jobs out of town and paying careful attention to his patterns of patrol. It is a testament to how _well_ she’s been doing that the only reason he catches her now is because she’s trying to gingerly make her way across Gotham on what feels like a sprained ankle _and_ knee from an unexpected snag in a recon trip.

She’d been taking a couple minutes to steel herself for the rest of the walk home, and by the time she sees him, he’s already adjusted the line of his trajectory to match up with hers. It’s easy to spot the moment he realizes there’s something wrong with the way she’s holding herself, because his body language changes, goes from playful to alarmed-concerned as he speeds up his movement. It ends in a neat flip and a tidy roll that lands him on her rooftop. “What happened?”

And isn’t that just… _great_. His stray wandered off and came limping back to him in need of care and cuddles. How sweet. Maybe this time she’ll stay close where it’s safe. Let him pamper her until some new project comes along to capture his attention.

No. She’s not interested in that story tonight. Tim brushes past him as well as she can, considering that neither of her legs is particularly capable of bearing her weight right now. Kitten’s walk is distinctly different from Timothea Drake’s. It’s confident and flaunting and right now, it’s more of a painfully slow hobble than anything else. “Not tonight, Nightwing. Go back to work, no one to save here.”

Of course he doesn’t just leave when she asks, and it’s frustratingly easy for him to just stop her with his hands on her shoulders and annoyingly open concern under that mask. “Is anything broken?”

“Your sense of hearing.”

His hand drifts over her cheek. “Did I do something wrong…?”

 _No. Yes. Not yet._ She presses her lips together in a thin line and doesn’t say anything.

Nightwing sighs. “Look. You’re only going to make it worse if you try to walk on it. Just – just let me – “ Instead of finishing his sentence, he swings her up into his arms. “There. Nightwing Express. Where do you want to go?”

A snort. “Like I’m going to give you directions to any of my safe houses.”

“So I’ll take you to one of mine.” Before she can object, he’s started running, and she barely has enough time to get a firm hold on him before he makes his first leap. Thank _god_ he doesn’t use any of the showy acrobatics when he has her. Not only would it be unnecessarily dangerous but she might have been forced to throw up on him.

The safe house he takes her to is pathetically small, little more than a place to sleep and patch up after a fight. He slips in through the window with her and sets her on the bed before grabbing a couple icepacks from the mini-freezer and a medical kit.

“I can see why you don’t care if I know the location of _this_ place,” she says. He’s helping her against her will. She feels that entitles her to a snippy attitude.

He just shrugs and sits down next to her, gently lifting her legs up onto the mattress. “What hurts?”

She considers refusing to cooperate, just to spite him, but she’s not quite irritable enough for the needlessly-prolonged pain. “My left ankle. Probably sprained. Right knee, feels like I twisted it.”

He has the good sense to work quietly, gently probing her ankle for signs of broken bones before settling the ice pack around it snugly and doing the same to her knee. When he’s done, he lets out a sigh. “Look, will you at least tell me what’s wrong? I can’t know how to fix this unless I know what I broke.”

“You shouldn’t mix fairy tales with liverwurst and buttermilk.”

“What?” he says, sounding bewildered. Which, ugh. _Heathen._ W _hite Christmas_ isn’t exactly obscure.

She sighs. “Nothing. We cats are known for our unpredictable, moody behavior.” And then, because she honestly does feel a little bad about the way she’s treating him – after all, it’s not technically his fault that their game is destined for a painful ending; that’s just the way things _work_ – she adds: “Don’t take it personally.”

He clearly doesn’t believe her, but he’s not willing to press it when she’s injured. Instead, he presses a light kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I have to go back on patrol. Stay here however long you need.”

She counts the minutes out, one, two, three, before she’s sure he’s far enough away that she can lie down on his bed, curl up around one of his pillows, and pretend she’s not disappointed that it doesn’t smell like him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the Kitten will not go to the Nightwing, etc.

When she gets back to her apartment, the first thing she does is call Selina to let her know that Kitten will be out of commission for a little while. The next few weeks belong to Timothea Drake, and as much as she misses the adrenaline rush of being Kitten, she can’t say she doesn’t appreciate the break. Timothea doesn’t have to juggle much beyond the few college classes she’s taking. There’s also the occasional chat with her neighbors to keep their relationships amiable, but mostly she stays in to catch up on TV and movies and bond with her rescue cat, Pixel.

She’s halfway through a season of _Arrested Development_ when one of her neighbors asks for help with _her_ cat, a ridiculous little thing that _loves_ climbing but gets terrified and freezes up every time. It’s gotten stuck in a tree because god, of _course_ it has. Tim’s not really up to the climb, but she has a lot of upper body strength to spare, so she pulls herself up until she can sit semi-comfortably on one of the branches. With the help of some treats she’d stuck in her pocket before heading up, she manages to coax the cat into sitting on her shoulder. Now she just has to figure out how to get down.

“Do you need any help?” someone asks, and she looks down to say, reflexively, that no, she’s fine, she can manage, and finds herself staring at a somewhat bemused Officer Grayson. Because _of course_ it’s Dick. He spends his nights as a vigilante and his days as a police officer, why _wouldn’t_ he come if someone told him their cat was stuck in a tree?

The cat chooses that moment to jump from her shoulders to her lap, then to Dick’s shoulders and the ground. It wanders off to her neighbor, leaving her alone in the tree with Dick Grayson to deal with. The little bastard. He could have at least stayed to coordinate a distraction.

“Well, that takes care of the cat,” Dick says. “What about you?”

“I’m fine,” she says, before gingerly starting to climb back down the tree with minimal use of her legs. She’d rather not give him the link of Timothea Drake and Kitten having the same injuries in the same time frame, but she misjudges how much her knee can take. When she tries to use her foot briefly for balance while she switches branches, her leg collapses under her.

She has a second to forcibly relax her body before she hits the ground, but of course Dick catches her first. “Are you okay?” Instead of letting her down, he just adjusts his hold on her so it’s a little more stable. “You live here, right? Why don’t I help you back to your apartment?”

She wants to tell him _no_ , but there’s no reason for Timothea Drake to refuse the help. “Please.” Her life is conspiring against her. It’s the only reasonable explanation.

“So. Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

“I was busy. Classes,” she says.

“Uh-huh.” He waits patiently while she unlocks the door and carries her to the closest seat, the couch that Pixel claimed in the name of napping. He opens an eye and lets out a disgruntled meow when he’s displaced to make room for her. “You should put something on that leg. Do you have ice?”

“It’s fine, honestly. I can take it from here.”

“Nope,” he says cheerfully. “I came here to rescue a kitten stuck in a tree. I’m not done yet.”

Tim rolls her eyes slightly. “That cat is going to be fine. He’ll forget about the whole thing the second something even mildly entertaining comes along to distract him. Like a sunbeam. Or dust.”

He finds her kitchen and goes digging through the freezer. It doesn’t take him long to find the stash of icepacks she keeps neatly stacked away in there. “That’s not the kitten I was talking about,” he says, heading back to the couch.

She glances over at Pixel, who is grooming himself in a faintly disgruntled, overly-enthusiastic way. “Well, he’s not happy he was woken up, but he’ll get over it.”

He gives her this _look_ , while he arranges the icepack on her knee. “Wasn’t talking about him, either. How’s your ankle? You never told me what happened there.”

“What?”

“Kitten.” He drags a chair closer so he can sit down. “If it’s any consolation, it did take me a while. You’re really good at covering your tracks, and you move like a totally different person when you’re in the suit. I didn’t even suspect I already knew you until recently. But.” He points a finger at himself. “Trained by Batman.”

“You just blew your cover,” she says, after a second.

Dick shrugs. “You already knew who I am. If you were going to use it against me, you would have done it months ago.”

It’s true, but _still_. She has the strangest urge to lecture him about potentially putting himself in danger by confirming his identity to someone who is, technically, a criminal. “What are you doing here?”

“You disappeared. Then you got hurt. I was worried.”

Pixel finishes grooming himself and hops onto Dick’s lap. He’s usually a little more wary of strangers, but then, Dick isn’t exactly a stranger. He’s already met Nightwing, and cats don’t really care much about secret identities.

“So. Can we revisit the conversation where you tell me what I did to piss you off?” His grin is rueful. “Maybe without the oblique references to classic film this time? Unless you really _are_ mad at me for turning a beloved General into a media spectacle to generate publicity for my musical revue, in which case I’m very concerned.”

Tim feels oddly touched that he bothered to figure that out. And then a little panicked because what can she _say_? “I. I don’t.”

He grabs her hand and squeezes it. “Please?”

She can’t quite look him in the eye. “This isn’t going to last.”

“What isn’t?”

“Us. This.” She waves a hand at him vaguely. “It’s just a game. And games are only interesting until someone wins.”

“I’m pretty sure we were _both_ already winning, actually.” He’s absent-mindedly rubbing his thumb against her palm, and it’s stupid and distracting and she has to pull her hand away to stop it. “Want to elaborate a little?”

And he’s going to make her explain it. Perfect. Tim bites her lip. “I’m only interesting as long as we keep playing. If it ends, there won’t be much point anymore, will there? It’s easier to just end it now.”

Dick leans back, a look of _what am I going to do with you?_ on his face. “Okay,” he says, slowly. “First, I’m actually kind of insulted you think I’m only interested in you because I’m trying to catch you. Just because I don’t have Batman’s level of obsessive focus doesn’t mean I have goldfish-brain. I’m not going to just stop being interested in you if we give up the flirting on rooftops thing.”

“I’m not saying you’d be _trying_ to,” Tim says. “It just… happens. It’s okay,” she adds, because she’s honestly not trying to make him feel bad. “I’m used to it.” It’s one of the inescapable constants in life, like death and taxes. People don’t stick around unless you give them a _reason_. Selina wants her around because her skills are useful to Catwoman. Jack’s not always paying attention, but when he does it’s usually because of familial obligation or guilt. Nightwing, she provides with a game to play, something more fun to occupy his time with than the scum that crawls out from Gotham’s underbelly.

Dick looks suddenly very tired. “…Okay. We’re going to come back to that later.” Tim frowns at him, because what is there to talk about? That’s just the way life works. “You think I only pay attention to you because of Kitten, right?”

She shrugs. It’s close enough. “Essentially.”

“So second issue with everything you just said there: if I hadn’t been pretty sure I had something good going with a certain cat burglar by the time I met you without the mask, I probably would have asked Timothea Drake out. Turns out, you’re actually really adorable and interesting even when you’re not running around on rooftops at night, and I find that attractive for some crazy reason.” He gives an exaggerated shrug. “Just one of life’s mysteries, I guess.”

“I’m not adorable,” she says. The objection sounds weak, even to her.

“I found you climbing a tree with a sprained ankle and a wrenched knee, trying to rescue your neighbor’s cat. And I know for a fact that _your_ cat is one of the ones I found you rescuing, because I went back to that animal shelter and checked the records to see what happened to them. That’s adorable. No arguments accepted at this time. Seriously, why are you even a thief?”

She shrugs. “I like it.”

“You know what else you might like – “

Tim snorts. “Being a vigilante? We’ve been over this before.”

“I was going to say branching out into a legitimate business as a security consultant who gets paid to plan how to rob her clients and then uses that information to tell them their weak spots, but sure, that too.”

Oh. That’s. Actually not a terrible idea. She blinks.

He gives her a bright smile. “I’m more than just a great ass and a pretty face, you know.”

And she _would_ kick him, she really would, except that (a) neither her ankle nor her knee is up to it, and (b) he really _does_ have a great ass.

Dick pats her leg like he knows what she’s thinking. “You know what, I’m on the clock, so why don’t I let you think about this. We’ll talk later.”

“I…” She bites her lip. “Okay.”

He gives her another smile and bends down to kiss her on the cheek before heading for the door. And then Tim just doesn’t move for a while, because the guy she’s had a crush on since she was a kid just asked her to abandon her life of crime so she can be in a relationship with him. She feels weirdly like she’s in a movie.

“It’s insane, right?” she asks Pixel. “I mean, I’m a thief. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve _been_ doing for years. I’m good at it. I like it. I don’t hurt people.”

Pixel stares up at her for a moment before purring and heading off to the kitchen to see if anything delicious happened to fall in his food bowl while he wasn’t paying attention.

Tim sighs and slumps back against the couch. “I don’t even know why I ask you anything."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim just wanted a nice, quiet day to sort out her thoughts. Things do not go as planned.

She guesses she should have called Selina earlier, but she spends a full day limping around her apartment and thinking in circles before it occurs to her that maybe her mentor might have some advice. That _is_ what mentors are for, isn’t it? So she settles onto the couch with Pixel curled up against her leg and dials the number. “I’m thinking about getting out of the business,” she says without much in the way of preamble.

_“Okay.”_

Tim waits for a second, because – “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”

_“Kitten, I started training you so you wouldn’t get yourself killed going out and following Batman and Robin all the time. If you want out, I’m not going to stop you. It’s always been your choice.”_

“ – Oh.” And that… _stings_ a bit more than she thought, but that’s… that’s fine. It’s not like Catwoman ever _needed_ a partner. Kitten’s always been a… useful addition, but she’s not _necessary._ She’d just thought that, maybe, Selina would object a little more.

_“It’s Nightwing, isn’t it? He made you an offer, and you’re thinking about it.”_

She bites her lip. “Possibly.”

_“For what it’s worth, I like him. And **you** like him. You always have.”_

“Well. Yes. But.” She stares down at Pixel, who’s purring and flicking his tail lazily from side to side. “I can’t just… _stop_ because he asked me to. That’s not how it works.”

There’s quiet for a moment. “ _Kitten. I think sometimes the biggest thing I ever stole was you.”_

And that’s just… so completely and utterly out of _nowhere_ that Tim’s honestly not sure if she heard right. “I – what?”

_“You were so cute, following them around. And you were **good**. If Bruce ever had an idea that you were there, you would’ve known it. I couldn’t believe a little thing like you was that good at tailing. But someone would’ve found you eventually.”_

“And if it was one of Batman’s enemies, they would’ve wanted to know what _I_ knew, which put me in danger,” Tim recites. It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation.

_“Yeah. But that wasn’t the only person I was worried about finding you.”_

“I’m not following.”

_“ **Batman** , Kitten. Batman would’ve noticed eventually. And maybe he’d’ve sent you home at first, but he would’ve seen what I saw, eventually. And he would’ve wanted you in his crusade.”_

The knot in her stomach that formed when Selina started talking solidifies into ice. “So – what? You thought I’d be the next Robin, so you wanted to take his toy away?”

_“That’s not what I meant, Tim – “_

Tim hangs up. It’s stupid and childish, but she’s not sure she can take any more of this conversation right now.

-

About an hour later, Tim finds Harley Quinn sitting upside down on her couch, flicking a piece of string around for Pixel to chase. “You expect rejection because your relationship model is unstable by default and the only kind of connection you think you can rely on is based on filling a specially-defined need.”

Oh god. This is not going to be a good day. Tim pinches the bridge of her nose and winces. “Why are you in my apartment?”

Harley gives an upside-down shrug. “Do you want to talk about this or not?”

“Not. Definitely not.”

“Oh. Okay.” Harley rights herself and bounces in place a little. “Do you want to watch a movie? Red should be done in a couple hours.”

The words wash over her like ice water. “Done doing _what_?”

“Well, Catwoman told us you and Nightwing were shacking up,” Harley says, and essentially everything about that sentence is awful, oh god, “so Ivy said she’d talk to him for you. You know, lay down some rules, shake him up a little for you.”

“Harley. Where did she say she was taking him?”

__

Dick looks… unusually relaxed, actually, for someone who’s tied up in one of Ivy’s vines. And _happy_. His face (or what she can see of it through the mask, anyway) lights up when he sees her and mumbles her name.

“What did you give him?” Kitten hisses to Ivy, whose lips curl up into a smirk, slow and satisfied.

“Just a little something to keep him receptive. We had a lot to talk about.”

Tim slides a knife out of its place in the costume she’s not even supposed to be wearing right now because Kitten is benched for _injury_ , and at this rate she’s going to add another week to her recovery time, at _least._ “If you don’t tell your plant to release him, I’m cutting him out.”

The irritated glare Ivy casts on her would probably intimidate lesser beings, but Kitten’s spent enough time working in Gotham to know what a dangerous, serious threat is and what isn’t. Particularly when she and Ivy are usually on good terms, and this particular kidnapping was ostensibly for Tim’s benefit. Besides, Tim only _threatened_ to cut the vines. Almost anyone else wouldn’t have thought twice about just hacking away, and she _knows_ Ivy appreciates things like that.

“Very well,” Ivy says, and Tim has to dive forward a little to get an arm around Nightwing before he collapses as the receding vines take his support away. He’s a little too dazed to help her carry his weight, which is going to be just _perfect_ for her knee and ankle, really. She manages to get them halfway across the greenhouse before a plant abruptly grows out in front of her path and presents several blooms for her at face level. “For the swelling,” Ivy calls out, and Tim huffs out a breath before snapping some of the blooms off with their stems and tucking them into her belt.

Figuring out where to bring him is a challenge. She can’t use her apartment because it’s not secure right now and she’s not even sure Harley ever left. The Wayne Manor is out, of course, because Tim is still technically a criminal, no matter what her relationship to any members of the family is. There aren’t any safehouses close enough that she can access, except –

There’s a Drake property a few blocks away. No one would be using it, and there shouldn’t be anyone coming by to perform maintenance and make sure it’s clean for at least a week. She _hates_ the idea of taking Dick to a property that belongs to her family, but she honestly can’t support his weight for long, and she’s not willing to bet that whatever Ivy dosed him with is going to wear off in the next fifteen minutes.

Getting him there takes some ingenuity and more inadvisable stunts than she’d like, because she can’t just carry Nightwing around at street-level without attracting unwanted attention. He’s still pretty out of it when they get to the townhouse. She has to let herself in through the front door and go through the house to open the roof access and bring him in. Her sprained ankle and knee last just long enough for her to get him to the nearest bedroom and dump him on the bed.

She _should_ find him something to wear but that would require more walking around on limbs that would hate her for it, so instead she just peels him out of his suit and kicks it out of sight under the bed (just in case). After a moment, she gives the same treatment to her outfit.

Ivy didn’t give her instructions to go with the flowers, so Tim guesses tried-and-true skin application and spends a few minutes crushing the flowers between her fingers and rubbing it into her knee and ankle. Dick’s totally out of it by then, so Tim figures it probably won’t hurt anything if she stays where she is until she feels like she can walk again.

__

In retrospect, she’s an idiot, because (a) she falls asleep, and (b) she wakes up to a sparsely-dressed Dick Grayson wrapped around her back with what has to be at _least_ six arms, judging from how thoroughly he’s managed to entangle the two of them. He’s still asleep, thank god, but Tim can’t count on him remaining in that state for long. Moving might wake him up, but if she _doesn’t_ move, he’s going to wake up eventually anyway, so she starts the difficult process of removing herself without jostling him too much.

It doesn’t work. Tim barely manages to get one arm off her before he starts moving. She freezes, hoping he’ll settle down and not wake up fully, but he ruins all her hard work by throwing his arm back over her and holding her even tighter than before. After a couple minutes of staying as still as possible, he groans and shifts at her back.

“Tim…?” he says, sounding adorable and confused, and Tim cringes inwardly. If this had happened a few months ago, Kitten would have been _thrilled_ and made the absolute most of it with playful flirting. But Kitten feels very far away right now, and Tim just wants to hide.

Dick disentangles one of hands to brush a hand over her shoulder. “Did I… miss something?”

She sighs and starts to sit up. It’s much easier when he’s awake and doesn’t have a death grip on her. “Ivy dosed you with something. I had to take you somewhere to sleep it off.”

“And you decided to sleep it off with me because I just looked too amazing to leave?” he asks with a quizzical little grin, and she’s honestly relieved that he’s taking the situation calmly. She’s not sure she would, in his position.

“You could say that. You could also say that I dragged your dead weight several blocks to get here and couldn’t stand up again once I sat down.”

“Shit.” He glances in the direction of her legs, even though they’re pretty thoroughly covered by the blankets, so it’s not like he could see anything short of some kind of enormous swelling-induced hideous deformation. “How’re you feeling?”

“Nothing another week or two won’t cure.” She can’t _quite_ make herself sound okay with that, because even though none of this was his fault, she was supposed to be staying at home and considering what she wants to do about the two of them. _Alone._ This fun little adventure isn’t helping her sort out her thoughts in the slightest.

He’s moving, sitting up and likely testing his levels of vertigo and whether or not he has a hangover from Ivy’s concoction. It’s a little hit-or-miss with that woman sometimes. “Where’s the First Aid?”

She shrugs. “There’s probably something in one of the bathrooms, but I can’t vouch for its contents.”

Dick raises an eyebrow at her. “This isn’t one of your safehouses?”

“It’s… safe,” she says, which is technically true. They don’t keep many valuables on this property, but it still has an excellent security system protecting it.

“So then where…? Tell me we didn’t break into a random house.”

“You could argue that we broke in, but the choice wasn’t random. It… belongs to my family.”

“ _Oh_. It’s…” He slows down, actually takes careful note of what he can see. Not that there’s much to notice; they’re in a guest bedroom on the top floor that has about all the personal touch of a hotel. “This is… where you grew up?”

“Not really. We used it every now and then.” She’s not particularly eager to give him the full story of her childhood as the daughter of the Drakes. _Particularly_ not now, when she’s supposed to be eating popcorn with her cat and weighing options _._ “You’re up now, so you can probably leave whenever you’re ready.” It’s a touch abrupt, but she doesn’t want to _be_ here, and more importantly, she doesn’t want _him_ to be here.

“I’m not going to just leave you here.” Dick pauses. “I mean, I guess I can if this is your place anyway, but – do you need help getting back to your apartment?”

“I know how to use a cab.” She leans over the bed and grabs his costume off the floor, shoving it into his arms. “I’ll be fine on my own. You can go out through the roof.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want.” He’s still not moving, though, and she can practically hear him trying to figure out what to say. “ – Thanks. For coming to rescue me. I had no idea you and Poison Ivy were so close.”

And _ugh_ , right, she’s going to have to find out what Ivy considers appropriate shovel talk conversation material. Just… later. She can work that information into the impending discussion about boundaries she needs to have with Ivy. “It’s… complicated.”

“Tim – “

“I need more time,” she says, cutting off whatever he was going to say. She’s pretty sure she can predict the gist of it, anyway. “To think. I came out because I was tipped off that Ivy had you. I’m not ready to have this conversation.”

“Okay,” he says after a moment. “Come find me when you’re ready, then.” He reaches out and squeezes her hand slightly before finally standing up and slipping out of the room.

Tim flops back against the bed and shoves her head under her pillow, like a few inches of stuffing is going to protect her from the rest of the world. When did this become her life. _When._

**Author's Note:**

> If you are interested in my fics and want more, I have an account at syntactition.tumblr.com where I have bits of stories that are currently in the works and other ficlets and stories that haven't made their way to AO3.


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